Well, I was reading up a bit and what happened was that after the French Revolution the Spanish monarchy became reactionary and for about 15 years until Napoleon's invasion in 1807-8 the liberals' political influence was on the wane.

But the fact is that the Spanish patriots fighting the occupation were liberal, too, as evidenced by the constitution of 1812.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman